Love Is
by MintSauce
Summary: Love is burning in places you've never been touched and love is when seeing that hurt expression on their face feels like you've chewed glass and swallowed it down with whiskey.


It was because of Mandy; although not because of something she said like it normally was. No, he hadn't heard anything Mandy had said in a while because he'd been avoiding her since she'd slapped him hard across the face for fucking her boyfriend; because obviously that was all it could possibly have been. _Fucking_.

No, the train of thought starts because as much as he loathes the place, a part of him is always drawn back to the Milkovich house at some point. And he can't even remember what he was looking for, whether it was his switchblade, a gun or even just a joint; but somehow he'd wound up in Mandy's room because she was always taking his shit and it was there on her bed.

Just one sheet of paper. Homework obviously that she'd half assed, or just couldn't be bothered to do really judging by the amount of scribbling out on the page. She'd obviously given up and thought, "_fuck it_", the usual Milkovich response to homework. But the words were there nevertheless, the only clear thing on the page, written in black ink in Mandy's bold handwriting.

_What is love to you?_

And maybe now he could understand why Mandy had scribbled so much out, because they weren't taught how to love and they definitely weren't taught how to put that sort of shit down on a page. He could understand why Mandy had given up, because neither of them had ever been able to love with words, only actions.

And yet, the question kept ringing through his brain. Like it was on repeat or some shit. Like bad lyrics to a shitty song. The sort Gallagher used to hum under his breath as he restocked shelves in the store.

That's how he finds himself sitting on the bathroom floor inside the shitty apartment he rented with Svetlana. Although, given how they actively avoided each other, it wasn't really sharing. They breathed the same air occasionally, that was all there was too it. The paper in front of him is slightly torn and more than a little crumpled and he has to shake the pen a few times before it'll work and Mickey's never been much good at words and his handwriting's always come out crude and untidy; but he finds himself putting words onto the paper like it was the only thing he'd ever been born to do.

Or maybe he just needed to finally get it out, needed to finally make it all real somehow. _Who the fuck knew_?

**What is love to you?**

**You want me to tell you what love is. And I bet you're just waiting for me to either say that why the fuck would someone like me need to be in love, or you're expecting a sonnet about how to me it's all rainbows and flowers and seeing my little sister happy for no other reason than she should be. You're waiting for me to say how it's about how it's unconditional in some ways, how it makes you want to protect people and make them all happy and some shit.**

**When we all know that's bullshit.**

**It's bullshit for me to say that someone like me doesn't need love or _can't_ love even, because everyone loves something. Whether it's a person, a dog, a shirt or the feel of skin splitting underneath their knuckles when they land a good punch. It's almost too easy to fall in love in some ways, because you can fall in love with a song or the new blade your brother stole for you for your fifth birthday; but maybe it takes something a little more substantial to fall in love with another person.**

**Maybe it takes a better person to do that. To fall in love for real in a way that isn't just you tossing that word around because people want to hear it. _Expect_ to hear it.**

**But it's definitely bullshit that love is all rainbows and smiles and that shit. Everyone knows it isn't and if it is, well then you're not doing it properly. Obviously.**

**Love to me is a fucking con.**

**It's something that works its way under your skin when you're not looking and in all the worst and best ways. It's something that starts with the wielding of a crowbar and floppy hair and eyes so fucking wide and innocent that you could drown in them. And then by the time you're looking through shitty, scratched glass with a phone pressed to your ear at that person that's dug their way into your heart like a fucking infestation, by the time they're smiling at you and telling you they miss you like you want to hear that shit, by then it's too fucking late to do anything about it. And you only realise that when you have to look away and bite down on your tongue to keep yourself from smiling back.**

**Love hurts. People say that all the time. But nobody ever says how much it does. Nobody ever says that when you hurt that other person and they get that look on their face that it feels like you chewed glass and washed it down with whiskey. Nobody ever thinks to mention that love burns you in places you never remember even being touched. And certainly nobody tells you that it feels like your heart is pumping poison around your body with every beat because you haven't seen them yet that day and you don't know if today is going to be the day that they realise you're no good or not.**

**Like you ever pretended to be any different. Like you ever pretended to be _good_. And like the fact you tell yourself that they fell in love with you back anyway, that they maybe even fell in love with you first, even knowing exactly who you were is going to make one damn difference in the end.**

**Love is a sour taste on the back of your tongue when you think about everything you can't say. Love is screaming at your own reflection and hating yourself because the person you see in the mirror isn't the person anyone is going to stay in love with. Not for as long as you will stay in love with them. Because everyone can fall in love, but not everyone can _stay_ in love and maybe that's always been the key to it all.**

**Love to me – because no matter what anyone ever fucking says, I can and I do love, I'm just not stupid enough to believe I'm worthy of it – is red hair and Snickers bars. Love is bruises on your hips and touches that burn. It's the smell of lime body wash and the feel of hot flesh under your hands.**

**Love to me is dreaming about putting a bullet in the back of my dad's skull even though I'd always been taught that blood runs thicker than water and love is pointless wishes about how everything could be if the circumstances were just a little different.**

**It's freckles and Jell-O and shit eating grins. It's everything I could, but am never going to say. It's letting him join the army and it's marrying a whore that I have to swallow bile at the sight of.**

**It's the sort of thing that'll kill you. It's maybe the only thing ever worth dying for. In the end, it's simply like nothing I've ever been taught, but anyone who thinks they can teach love is a fucking liar. And when I tell him I'm not in love, well then I'm one too.**

The smell of gasoline burns the inside of Mickey's nostrils and the only thing he can hear over the rapid beating of his own heart is his father's rattling snores. His insides feel numb in a way that they never have before, in a way that makes him worried because maybe a part of him is finally broken beyond repair now. Maybe he was never whole in the first place.

Except that's wrong, because with Gallagher's hands on his skin he'd never felt more complete in his entire life.

The front door of the house is already locked and the windows were boarded up a long time ago after Iggy pitched a chair through the glass one night. Not that it matters anyway, because the gasoline is soaked into the floorboards around the doors and the windows, a trail of it through the entire fucking house.

He's got a crumpled piece of paper with scruffily inked words on the page in black clutched in his hand and it's a page filled with confessions and admissions and everything Mickey will never say. He can't quite work out if it's liberating or if it makes a piece of him shatter when he holds the naked flame of his lighter to the edge and watches the truth burn away to ash.

He drops the flaming paper onto the piss-stained rug right by his father's side, where he's asleep on the couch and Mickey breathes in smoke and gasoline and tastes ash on his tongue as he calmly walks away, locking the back door behind him like he's never done before.

And he thinks maybe at the end of it all, love is just everything going up in flames anyway.


End file.
